


Making Good Progress

by LockePeter



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LockePeter/pseuds/LockePeter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years into the oddly cooperative education of young possibly-antichrist Warlock, a demonic entity pursues a somewhat different side goal for what he hopes are solidly the wrong reasons, but privately suspects might have something to do with bloody ineffability again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Good Progress

Lust, Crowley reminded himself for the umpteenth time, was undoubtedly and quite securely in every definitive list of sins. He was sure of it. Double checked, in fact, and this was precisely the story he was sticking with. 

The additional alcohol content he was allowing to slip into his bloodstream this particular evening was also, he maintained, in the interest of the greater bad, a little bit of effort he was putting in today just for bad measure. He certainly wasn't looking to loosen any particular inhibitions, as he was, after all, a professional at that. He had been for six thousand years, he was the original inventor of the first inhibition and he was the one who'd went right ahead and loosened it. 

Crowley took another sip of what had been a rather mellow craft beer until it had touched his lips, and set the bottle down on the dusty cover of one of thousands of manuscripts filling the small backroom of Aziraphale's bookshop. With skill and dexterity that would have impressed any sleight of hand artist alive, the aforementioned owner of the shop ensured that a coaster interceded just before the bottle made fateful and irreparable contact.

"My point is, it's gonna be a blink of an eye and this is going to get out of hand. Every major motivator that we've got applied to this little guy is going to go...." Crowley gestured, flapping imaginary wings with his fingers for good measure. "Right out the window once he hits puberty."

Aziraphale frowned. It was true, he often didn't consider the child's more...physical desires, but he supposed that was more the other side's specialty. 

"I suppose, given that we must have established some sort of delay by now in the usual order of things, we ought to consider it. I had assumed we'd just follow the same sort of a pattern. I might bring in a beatific, virtuous young lady, you might contact a disreputable harlot, we'd toss both in and call it a draw." Aziraphale waved a hand, perfectly trimmed nails glinting in the dusty beam of light.

"And there's where you don't get it. A twelve, thirteen year old boy? Harlot every time. No question. Tie broken, and we're right where we don't want to be." Crowley shook his head gravely. "You just don't understand the chemical component."

"I was around when the chemical component was designed! I know the...you know, details and all that. No need to draw up diagrams." Aziraphale folded his arms, frowning. Crowley did his best not to look too hard at that little frown. 

"Right, but you've got no experience of it. Temptation works differently when it involves glands and...biology. We have them, we just don't use them. So, in the interest of knowing exactly how to balance off of each other, I guess I'm proposing a sort of...experiment." Crowley caught himself hissing slightly, bit down on his tongue. 

"Oh really." Aziraphale's eyebrow shot up, a bit of a tentative smile on his face. "I thought we were past this, Crowley. We had an Agreement."

"And a vested interest to save this Earth, Aziraphale, you know that. I don't want to lose....cell phones and the internet and Manchester, and you don't want to be without fascinating old misprints, and quiet street cafes, and.." Crowley gestured, trying to think up something else. 

Aziraphale sighed, continuing on.

"Relax. I'll do it. For pistachio ice cream, and getting up early for the sunrise, and Mozart, and Crow-...dads with cocktail sauce." Aziraphale blinked. It really was a quite bizarre squishy sensation, allowing all those minor organs to hum into life. The sort of thing you might not notice when it's already been going on, but to an angel used to total bodily control, it was quite unsettling. It was already causing slips of the tongue. 

Crowley licked his lips, a nervous habit left over from a previous bodily arrangement that may or may not have involved slightly more tongue flicking. It was working, and for all the correct and decidedly unwholesome reasons. For a giddy moment, Crowley considered bringing up 'temptation of an angel' at one of Hastur and Ligur's demonic book club sessions, but decided against it because there are was a non-zero chance that he might end up standing up to his nostrils in earthworms for it. Crowley was not the sort to take risks willingly, which was what worried him so much about this. Why was he doing it? I mean, yes, he could say he was lying to plant a seed of lust in his carefully lulled opposing number to help bring about Armageddon, but he'd be lying to himself more than usual if he went with that. The story was nonsense, of course, if anything happened with Warlock it was happening at eleven or never. He had a sneaking suspicion these were the sort of emotions that generally got more associated with plucking daisies and sighing to oneself, and that made him feel disgustingly clean.

Aziraphale cleared his throat, politely.

"Sorry, but, where does one start? You being the expert in these matters, of course." Aziraphale set his hands down in his lap primly, still keeping up a steady level of disapproval and constant eye contact. Crowley nearly winced.

"Well, ah, perhaps the basic, general, you see, accepted first step." He reached out and took one of Aziraphale's hands in his own. "Feel anything?"

Aziraphale flexed his fingers a little, frowning.

"No. What am I meant to-" Aziraphale's thought was interrupted by Crowley leaning forward and pressing his lips to his own. 

_How terribly inconvenient._ He thought privately. _This entirely limits the possibility of sharing observations in situ, as it were. I wonder if continued contact is entirely necces-well, I never!_

Though Crowley's tongue acrobatics were usually something he only practiced in private, to avoid drawing attention to himself as something other than human, he felt that the lack of response from Aziraphale indicated that further action needed to be taken, so to speak. Besides, he'd been taken with a mad whim, and now seemed a good time to be doing things that weren't stricly speaking sane. Aziraphale's hands shot up to Crowley's chest, determined upon leaving his lap to stop this idiocy before it got out of, well, hand. A forceful push away, followed with a healthy dose of utter outrage ought to do the trick. When they reached their destination, however, he seemed to be struck with a slight indecision.

After a moment, Crowley felt a set of perfectly maintained nails slide across his collarbone as Aziraphale gently seized his shirt. He wasn't exactly pulling, or letting him press in any closer, but he decided it was a start. 

He let himself relax, though how exactly little that meant in Crowley's current state of mind might be reflected in exactly how high he managed to jump from a seated position when he felt something drape itself across his shoulders. His head twitched away, and he looked up to see that the room appeared somewhat more cramped than it had been before. And also made of feathers. He felt almost certain he could have remembered that detail. 

It had been a while since he'd seen Aziraphale's wings. A little dusty, perhaps, with a lingering smell of old books the same as had always followed the rest of him. Not nearly as well maintained as Crowley's own pair, but that was just typical when you compared a fallen angel's wings to those of a more conventional variety. He glanced back at Aziraphale's face, more than a little bewildered.

"Concentration slipped." The angel was actually laughing at him, face twisted up into an infuriating little smirk. "Funny how you've maintained your composure, Crowley. All well and good for me to participate in your little experiment, but can't risk letting your own body go, of course. That might be playing by your own rules."

Crowley tried not to think about how strange it was that the angel was actually baiting _him_. he closed his mouth, coming up three intelligent comebacks before a second had gone by. They collided, somewhere in the region of his throat, and but for a few survivors crawling out of the wreckage, it was a complete loss.

"I...but you, see...my point, my actual....hm." Crowley pouted at the smug angel. 

"Don't you give me that moral-of-the-story look. And if you even think the word 'ineffable' I swear-" Crowley didn't get a chance to swear. Which was unfortunate, because it was another human invention he quite enjoyed. Instead, the hands that had been at that point still wrapped around his collar had simply gone and yanked his shirt (tailor made, thank you very much) open. Crowley stared.

"You proposed this, and it was a perfectly valid point. But it doesn't make any sense for only me to participate, I'll overshoot and Warlock will end up waiting until marriage for the best love-making of his life and we'll have to deal with eternal heaven." He pushed on Crowley's shoulders with his wings, bringing him in closer. 

_Oh, what the heaven._ Thought Crowley. _At least if this whole thing tips one way or another I can have something decent to remember the world by._

Although decent may not have been the precisely correct word for what followed.


End file.
